24. Beck
twenty-four
Beck
I've got the same two bags I arrived with, but packing them feels harder than it should for a guy who's done this a hundred times.
Gear goes in one. Clothes in the other. Things that spread out over eight weeks into drawers and shelves and the space under my bed, consolidating back down into what they were before I got here. Two bags. That's all this ever technically was.
It doesn't feel like that now.
Reid's in the next room doing the same thing, faster than me, already on the phone with someone from our old crew getting details about what's burning.
He sounds good. Sharp. Ready. I recognize that voice because it used to be mine every single time an assignment came through, no complications, just forward motion toward the next fire.
I still feel some of that. I'm a smokejumper. Fire activity's up. My crew needs bodies, and there's a part of me that's been coiled all summer waiting for this call. That part isn't gone. It's just not the only part anymore.
The rest of the crew's getting ready for their normal Friday out in the kitchen, boots and coffee and the usual morning noise. It's strange standing here packing instead of joining them. First time all summer I'm not part of that morning chaos.
Ivy finds me before she leaves, catching me in the hallway with her pack already on her shoulder. “See you tonight,” she says, like it's any other morning, and kisses me quick before I can make it into something bigger than it needs to be right now.
“Tonight,” I agree.
Then she's gone, out the door with the rest of them. I stand here longer than necessary, listening to the trucks pull away on the gravel.
Reid and I spend the day handling the practical end of leaving.
Making sure nothing that belongs to the district ends up mixed into our bags by accident.
Turning in Blackpine-specific gear. Confirming travel arrangements with our unit.
Russ finds us mid-afternoon, then says the kind of thing Russ says instead of a speech.
“You two did good work here. Appreciate you filling in.”
“Appreciate you having us,” I say.
“You're welcome back anytime.” He means it, plainly, the way he means most things. I don't have a quick response ready.
The house is quiet most of the day with everyone out working. I notice it more than I thought I would. This place was never technically mine. Temporary assignment, same as every other one I've had. I've packed up out of dozens of places just like this without a second thought.
This one's different. I understand why even more fully in late afternoon, when I hear trucks pulling back in, and the whole house comes back to life at once.
Boots. Voices. Somebody complaining about the day's heat. Mabel appearing from wherever she disappears to during daylight hours. And Ivy. Seeing her walk through the door does the same thing it's done every evening for weeks. I stop thinking about anything else.
Except tonight it's our last one.
Tessa's got a pot of spaghetti going by the time everyone's cleaned up, big enough to feed the whole crew, garlic bread knots lined up on a baking sheet that Nolan is supervising with far more seriousness than the task requires.
“It's bread, Nolan,” Tessa says, looking at whatever he's produced. “Not a rescue knot.”
“Structural integrity matters.”
“We're supposed to be able to eat it.”
“It'll taste fine.”
“It looks like something you'd use to secure a tarp.”
Nolan defends his technique the whole way to the table, and nobody's convinced, but the bread does, in fact, taste fine, structural concerns aside.
Dinner's loud, easy, everyone crowded around the table the way we always are, not enough chairs, someone standing, someone stealing food off someone else's plate.
Trevor tells a story about something that happened on the trail when Reid and I were with Elk Ridge.
Cassidy and Dani argue about whose turn it is to do the shopping run for next week.
Reid steals the last garlic knot directly off Nolan's plate.
I look around the table at some point and realize how familiar I am with all of this now.
I know Trevor talks with his hands when he's excited.
I know Tessa's the one who'll actually clean up without anyone asking.
I know Cassidy's quiet until she's not, and when she's not, she's usually right.
I know who Mabel's going to bother for scraps, currently working her way toward Dani with real determination.
Eight weeks ago these were mostly strangers. Tonight they're not.
Toward the end of dinner, Nolan brings up the Bigfoot caller, some joke about needing it for tomorrow's trail assessment.
“Keep it,” I tell him.
He looks up, actually delighted. “Seriously?”
“You've gotten more use out of it than I have.”
“I'll treasure it.”
“Use it responsibly.”
“Obviously,” he says, in a tone that suggests the opposite is more likely.
Cleanup happens with people drifting off gradually, someone showering, someone disappearing to their room, the noise of the house slowly thinning out.
Reid and I have an early start, so most people say their goodbyes now, a few quick hugs, a couple of good luck out there’s that don't need to be bigger than they are.
Eventually it's just Ivy and me. We end up outside, the porch quiet, the house settling into sleep behind us. The air's warm and dry, the way it's been for a few weeks now. Far off toward the ridgeline something flickers, silent.
“Dry lightning,” I say, mostly to myself.
Ivy follows my gaze. “Guess that explains some of it.”
We sit for a while without talking, her leaning into my side, my arm around her, watching the horizon flicker every few minutes.
This is different from Elk Ridge, and we both know it.
Last time, half my things stayed here. I had a return date, even if it was uncertain.
Now, there's no predetermined day I'll walk back through the door.
“So what happens to us?” Ivy asks, quiet.
I don't hesitate. I've already answered this for myself, somewhere between the drive-in and tonight, even if I haven't said it yet.
“We try.”
She looks at me.
“I'm not pretending it'll be easy,” I say. “We'll text. Call when I've got service and the schedule allows it. See each other when we can. I don't know how often that'll be.”
“I don't know where I'll be in October,” she says. “You don't know where you'll be after fire season. That's a lot of not knowing.”
“I don't need to know where we'll be in October to know I don't want us to end.”
She goes still. “So, we try,” she says finally, like she's testing the words, deciding she likes them.
“We try.”
Relief moves through me. I hadn't realized how much I needed her to choose the same thing I have.
We don't talk logistics past that. No discussion of ski patrol locations or thesis defenses or which state either of us might end up in six months from now.
Tonight we only needed to answer one question, and we have.
The lightning keeps flickering out past the ridge, silent, distant, the same weather that's pulling me back to my smokejumper crew tomorrow. Ivy leans harder into my shoulder, and I hold her. For a while neither of us says anything at all.
“I'm going to miss you,” she says eventually.
“I'm going to miss you too.”
Another quiet stretch. Then: “Beck?”
I look at her. “What?”
She opens her mouth like she's about to say something, hesitates, and I watch whatever it was change into something else before it reaches her mouth.
“Come back safe,” she says.
I know better than to promise her that outright. Wildfire doesn't make guarantees, and I'm not going to pretend it does just to make tonight easier.
“That's the plan,” I say.
Then I kiss her. It's not desperate, but we don't know when we'll get to do this again, and something about that uncertainty makes neither of us inclined to end the kiss. Eventually we go back inside. The house is dark and quiet, everyone else in their rooms for the night.
We don’t head toward our rooms. Instead, Ivy follows me into the common room. We've got maybe seven hours before Reid and I need to be on the road, and neither of us wants to spend any of them apart, not tonight.
We end up on the couch, same one from the night after the first fire, months ago, when she fell asleep on my shoulder.
I didn't have the sense to know then what that meant.
This time I know. Ivy curls into my side, and I pull a blanket off the back of the couch and drape it over both of us.
For a while we just talk, quiet, about nothing important, the kind of conversation that doesn't need to go anywhere.
I know what I want to give her before she falls asleep. I get up once, just long enough to grab the shirt off the top of my packed bag, the one she wore over her sundress at the drive-in. I bring it back to the couch.
She looks down at it, and I watch recognition cross her face.
“Thought you might want it,” I say.
She doesn't say much. Just takes it, holds it against herself, like she knows what I mean by giving it to her.
“Thank you,” she says, quietly.
That's enough. I don't need to explain it, and she doesn't ask me to.
She falls asleep before I do, her head against my shoulder, my shirt still held loosely in her hands.
I stay awake a while longer, watching the dark window, listening to the house settle around us.
Reid's alarm is set for early. I'll wake her before I go, walk her back to her own bed, or just let her sleep here, whichever she prefers.
For now, I don't move. I just sit here, her weight against my side, and let myself have these last few hours before everything about tomorrow becomes real.
I spent most of this summer waiting to get called back. Waiting for fire activity to pick up. Waiting for my regular crew to need me again. Waiting for things to go back to normal.
Funny how much can change while you're waiting for something.